Bottleneck
by cornerchemistry
Summary: When Fiona feels the urge to relapse, she calls the one person in her life who can understand what she's going through. Eli/Fiona friendship, Fimogen, implied Eclare. ONESHOT.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Degrassi. Obviously.

**Author's Note**: Takes place post-In the Cold Cold Night but after the beginning of S12. WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR SEASON 12 BASED ON THE PROMOS AND EPISODE DESCRIPTIONS. This is my first fanfic ever. Hi!

Saying it again, so no one gets mad:

**SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR SEASON 12 BASED ON THE PROMOS AND EPISODE DESCRIPTIONS.**

**Bottleneck**

By CornerChemistry

_Tuesday evening, 7:00 pm_

_Riiiiiiing._

_Riiiiiiing._

_Riiiiiiing._

_Riiiiiiing._

_"Hello, you have reached the voice mailbox of Holly J. Sinclair-"_

"Dammit!" Fiona angrily threw her phone into the sofa cushions. She'd dialed Holly J.'s number four consecutive times. Four send buttons pressed. Four held breaths. Four hang ups. Four disappointments. Where the hell _was_ she? Hadn't Holly J. promised to be there for her, that their friendship would withstand the distance between Toronto and New Haven? Why in the name of everything about their friendship that they'd been through together was she not answering right this second? Was she okay? Oh God, what if she wasn't okay? what if something happened? What if her body started rejecting her kidney transplant and she was back in the hospital and -

Fiona sighed. She didn't want to think anymore.

And that, in and of itself, was her problem.

* * *

It wasn't one specific incident that had led her to the liquor store earlier that evening. _It would be so much easier to explain if it was just another hugely dramatic life event in the life of Fiona Coyne_, she thought. Rather, it was a combination of hurt and slight throughout her day. Each occurrence took something away from her. Weakened her foundation, like a child's game of Jenga. A rude comment from Marisol during a history class debate. Being aggressively catcalled on her way home by a middle-aged pig. Imogen having a cold and being able to come over to the loft as they had planned. Sitting at home... alone... again.

It reminded her of the old days, the worst days.

In a familiar aisle, Fiona grabbed the first champagne bottle she saw. She paid - digging through her purse for exact change, still an unfamiliar concept for her - and headed back home - head down, eyes down.

* * *

One of the techniques Fiona had been taught in rehab was to remind herself of her reasons for not drinking. She'd written them down and recited them at her group meeting. She remembered the polite applause from the other group members when she finished, the encouraging smile from her group leader - and later, the swell of emotion in Holly J's voice when she said, "I'm so proud of you, Fi."

But at this moment, she couldn't remember a single reason except _everyone will be disappointed in me._

Which only made her feel worse.

"What next?" she muttered. "What next... contact a member of your support group. Your sponsor, a close friend or family member..."

Fiona hesitated -

_...a close friend..._

- then dialed the number of the one person she knew in Toronto who might not think she was totally crazy.

* * *

"Thanks for coming over," Fiona said as she opened the door. "Sorry to ruin your dinner out with the folks."

"No problem, we were just waiting for the check when you called," Eli said, shrugging out of his winter coat. "Bullfrog's gonna come back and pick me up at the usual time... you know, bipolar-kid-curfew o'clock."

"If I keep you here until 10:05, will you turn into a pumpkin?"

"I hope not, orange isn't really my style." Eli's expression changed from a smirk to a slight frown. "Seriously though, what do you need me to do to help?"

Fiona walked towards the sofa and motioned for Eli to follow her. "Well... at this point I'm supposed to make a list of reasons why I want to drink. And then you're supposed to help me think of logical counterpoints for each of those reasons."

"Sounds easy enough," Eli said with a grin as he sank into the sofa cushions, arms folded behind his head. "Shoot."

* * *

"I want to drink because Marisol pretty much called me a moron for not knowing who Pierre Trudeau was other than the airport namesake. I'm not from this country! Every airport here is named after some dead guy, I can't possibly keep them all straight!"

"He was a prime minister. Charismatic, yet arrogant. Very divisive. Some romantic scandal, too."

Fiona grinned. "Sounds like Drew Torres."

"You should've called _him_. He would _definitely_ be able to talk you out of drinking." Eli shook his head. "Anyway... so you want to drink because Marisol was a bitch to you... no matter how much you drink, she's still going to be a bitch. And even though she won't know you drank, she still won because she got in your head."

"Hmm..." Fiona trailed off, looking thoughtful. "True."

"And... check. Next reason?"

* * *

Fiona reclined on the opposite end of the sofa, feeling slightly more at peace. She toyed with her bracelet as she spoke, clasping and unclasping it, twisting it clockwise around her wrist. "I want to drink because some creep followed me for a block saying, 'Hey, beautiful! Hey, beautiful!' Then called me a stuck-up bitch when I didn't respond." Fiona shuddered at the memory.

"First of all - fuck. That. Guy. Second - why did that bother you?"

"Because usually when that happens I think, 'how _dare_ that low-class douchebag think he'd ever have a chance with Fiona Coyne...' and then I remembered that now... I'm low-class, too. It made it all the more upsetting to me."

Eli chuckled. "Class isn't just about money, Fiona. It's about how you carry yourself. In that regard you're probably the classiest person I know."

Fiona's eyes lit up. "I can't wait to tell Clare you said that!"

"Don't you _dare_," Eli warned.

"Okay, fine, I won't. You're no fun."

"Let's move on to the next reason."

* * *

"I wanted to drink because Imogen was supposed to come over tonight. But she has a cold and doesn't want to get me sick, too. I said I didn't care about that... but she insisted." Fiona smiled sadly, recalling what Imogen said to her on the front steps of Degrassi, just after the final bell.

_"Silly Fiona Coyne, if you get sick too, then we'll have to wait twice as long to hang out!" Imogen said, like it was the most obvious thing in the entire world. "And I get the feeling you're probably not into runny-nose makeouts." Giving Fiona a kiss on the forehead, she whispered, "Save me room on the couch for Friday. You know I'll miss you tonight, no matter how far into Nyquil dreams I go." _

Fiona sighed at the memory. "I was _so_ looking forward to spending time with her - we haven't gotten a chance to do that as much as I'd hoped since I got back from New York. And I hate being in this stupid loft by myself."

"Did you call Imogen? Before me, I mean."

"Well, no, she's not feeling well and..."

"And?" Eli pressed.

"You know how much I like her, Eli. I still can't believe she feels the same way. It's not that I don't trust her, I mean, I know that if I told her about this she'd be here in two seconds, cold or no cold. I just don't want to... scare her off, you know? Like I'd be Fiona the Alcoholic to her instead of Fiona the Girlfriend."

"Well, as someone who has scared off my share of girls -" Eli hesitated before continuing his thought. "- Imogen among them, I may add - I get what you're saying. Completely."

Sitting up, Fiona looked at Eli curiously. "How are you handling it with Clare this time?" she asked.

Well... in one way it's different because we have so much history. She saw so much of the bad stuff - and there was a_ lot_ of bad stuff."

"You don't have to remind me. Last year I directed an entire _play_ of quote-unquote 'bad stuff'," Fiona interjected, using air quotes for emphasis.

"Yeah... I know. Anyway," Eli continued, looking thoughtful. "For a long time I worried that she would always think of me as... Eli the Bipolar Lunatic. And hanging out with her again while working on the paper was simultaneously both fantastic and awkward. But she made the first move back into relationship territory. She had seen me at my absolute worst and yet was able to get past that. And that made me feel a lot more comfortable."

"So she's not afraid that you're going to have an episode at any given moment?"

"Well, she gets that big-eyed good-girl _Clare_ look on her face when I say stuff like how I want to replace Becky's shampoo with Nair so that there's not one perfect blond hair on her idiotic self-righteous head. But that's how Clare is. It's pretty much the same look she gave me during the whole Fitz debacle with maybe 5% extra 'Uh-oh, what if he loses his shit?' added. And I can live with 5%. I earned it."

Eli reached over to pat Fiona's hand. "Imogen knows your history, even if she hasn't seen you at your worst. And she's still with you, right?"

"But you've said that you felt like Imogen was worried about your illness all the time when you dated."

"I did feel like that. But, um... I kind of deserved it," Eli said sheepishly. looking down. "From the day we met I gave her nothing but reasons not to trust me. You haven't given Imogen any reasons not to trust you."

Fiona frowned. "Other than the whole Katie and Marisol tinfoil fiasco at the beginning of the year."

"But you weren't really friends before that. You owned up to that pretty quickly, and became friends after. So your actual friendship-turned-relationship is practically _bursting_ with trust."

* * *

"That's it! I have a reason," Fiona said suddenly.

Eli furrowed his brow. "...not sure I follow."

"I'm not going to drink the champagne," Fiona said confidently. "I have a reason not to. I'm not going to drink because... I want to be trusted. I want to keep being a better person than who I was. For Imogen... for my friends-" she paused to flash a smile at Eli -" but mostly for me." Fiona rolled her eyes. "I'm _so _over it."

Eli leaned over from his side of the couch for a hug. "Now that sounds like the Fiona Coyne I know."

Fiona leaned her head on Eli's shoulder. "Can you pour the bottle down the drain for me?" Fiona asked in an almost whisper. "I don't want to be anywhere near it."

"Of course," Eli responded, slowly extracting himself from the hug. "Hey, your phone has a message or something," he said, picking it up from the coffee table and handing it to Fiona.

Fiona unlocked it and glanced down at her missed text.

_Holly J: Serving at Yale Entrepreneurial Society alumni dinner. Can prob. slip out for 5 min to talk. Everything OK?_

"Hey, put on a movie or something while I do this," Eli called from the kitchen. "NOT CLUELESS."

Fiona replied to Holly J's text:

_Fine now. Call me tomorrow. xoxox._

And sent one more:

_Rest up, dear Immy. Can't wait to see your smiling face at school tomorrow! I'll bring you extra cough drops. :) xo._


End file.
